Spoilers ahead for The Last of Us season 2.
Someone who should be dead is wandering the set of The Last of Us season 3. Not as a metaphor. In costume, on camera, breathing.
A fresh set video from the season 3 shoot captures Jesse, played by Young Mazino, upright and moving. Anyone who made it through season 2 knows why that shouldn’t be possible. Abby, played by Kaitlyn Dever, shot and killed Jesse in the finale — fast, vicious, done.
The theories were immediate.
Why Jesse being alive doesn’t mean Jesse is alive
This one doesn’t require much detective work. Because Jesse died in the season 2 finale, seeing him again almost certainly signals a flashback — and the period he and Tommy spent together in Seattle is the obvious candidate.
Across The Last of Us, Tommy — played by Gabriel Luna — functions as Jesse’s mentor. The last glimpse we got of him, he was gravely wounded with Abby’s gun trained on him during the standoff at the Seattle theater.
The same scenario unfolds in The Last of Us Part II, where Jesse dies. Tommy is shot in the head and lives through it, left crippled and blind in one eye.
Season 3 looks like it’s rewinding the clock
Every signal coming off the season 3 production hints at a timeline that refuses to run in a straight line. Set photos and footage released earlier suggested Abby would get considerably more attention as a character. Footage of a healthy, living Jesse implies the series is committing more heavily to flashbacks for its central figures.
That fits the state the story was left in. If your finale puts a bullet in one lead and abandons another bleeding on a theater floor, the past suddenly becomes the more productive place to set up shop.
Where Ellie fits into all this
Bella Ramsey, who leads the series as Ellie, has confirmed they’ll be back on set later this year. With Abby stepping into the spotlight, Ellie’s part appears to be on the back burner.
For a show constructed around Ellie and Joel, that amounts to a genuine structural change. It’s also the kind of gamble that only pays off if the flashback material holds up — which presumably explains why Jesse is in front of a camera again.
The short version of how we got here
Neil Druckmann created The Last of Us and Naughty Dog developed it in 2013 — a survival-horror video game series with millions of devoted players. Its story tracks Joel, a smuggler, and Ellie, a teenager immune to the infection, as they cross an overrun United States, surviving encounters with infected mutants and hostile human factions.
HBO adapted the games into a record-breaking series, which is now approaching its third season.
Jesse occupied a defined role in that world: he led patrols in Jackson, stayed loyal to Ellie, and was one half of a complicated relationship with Dina, played by Isabela Merced. Then came Abby’s trigger pull.
When you can actually watch it
As of this writing, The Last of Us season 3 has no official release date. Seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream on HBO Max.
Which leaves the clearest current insight into season 3 in the hands of a shaky set video — one showing a man who died on screen sharing a scene with the guy who survived a bullet to the head.